Archive for the new media Category

United States Mid-Term Elections are next week and social media takes on a greater role than two years ago in the Presidential election. It can be said President Barack Obama is the first POTUS to have used social media in a political campaign.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs leverages social media for his news briefings. Gibbs uses 140-character jargon to solicit questions; a version of crowdsourcing. His management style answers just one tweeted query on YouTube.

Civics is sociology and sociology benefits from tools of social media. What creative utility have you considered for online social networks?

Politicians and media covering them make excellent use of Twitter and other social networks. This is the year of social media according to researchers such as Gartner, Edison and Nielsen. Now is also the occasion we are expected to learn or begin to make money with social media according to a number of studies.

ABC News plans to anchor election night coverage from network headquarters in New York City and Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. ABC teams up with Facebook for elections coverage. Social media for American elections is reality.

Here we’ve offered examples of using the big two social networks; Twitter and Facebook. However there are others and more ways to use online tools to cover voting. Google gets social with its elections center. The search engine provides four services for voters:

Polling place locations

Registration instructions

Ballot information

State and local election office contact information

The question remains – how are you using social networks, new media and traditional media to serve voters of the United States this election?

The case I present to broadcasters developing mobile strategy is without taking account for social media planning is incomplete. A ReadWrite Mobile post, sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent, explores the developer ecosystem for mobile apps which covers software. Technology is key, however, it should be considered last in strategy development. First think about the consumer, the audience, the user.

“Among the most popular are apps that provide some form of entertainment (games, music, food, travel and sports) as well as those that help people find information they need and accomplish tasks (maps and navigation, weather, news, banking).”

Pew Research cites year old data based on The Nielsen Company’s Apps Playbook but the Nielsen blog linked here has more recent stats. Data for mobile apps and usage evolves daily. Likewise, use of social media grows every day. Urgency to get social and mobile is constant.

Developers are doing some really creative work with apps. New programs for social networks and other media are developed at a rapid rate. It’s a race to meet consumers on their turf.

Edison Research conducted a recent study calculating one hundred percent growth in daily usage of social media in just the last year. Edison’s report on frequent social networkers points to a transformation in lifestyle for many Americans.

I tried to provide enough sources of data to support my assertion mobile planning is social media strategy.

Developers of MyNewsVu seek partners among television stations, networks and vendors of television news automation products. Roland Boucher and his co-founder Stevan Vigneaux have created a product they describe as “next generation on demand news-site software.” Messieurs Boucher and Vigneaux say they are reinventing television for the connected age.

MyNewsVu offers a personalized rundown or playlist of news stories on a station or network’s website. Recent research notes video is king of online content. Other studies indicate user experience is the must have in presentation of media. Boucher says MyNewsVu promises an “individually-personalized TV newscast to each and every viewer.” Here are a couple of ways to check on his statement. Engineers and techie types perhaps would prefer to watch the presentation of the technology and business case for MyNewsVu. Editorial professionals bored with technical information, who just want to know how it works, likely would choose to test the service itself. The links provide you both experiences.

In this age when Jon Stewart is probably the most trusted news source in the United States of America his Daily Show website is user friendly. Stewart’s site offers an easy online presentation of his comedy channel program. MyNewsVu proposes an interesting solution for broadcasters searching for new and friendlier methods to communicate with audiences, who demand content when and where they desire.

So for those interested, here’s an opportunity to get in on the development stage of technology to deliver personalized viewing experiences for television news and shape the user experience. Boucher calls for partners to help polish MyNewsVu. He says they are “currently seeking development partners from a major Network News Organization or a Newsroom Automation and/or News Production Systems Company wishing to extend their News Production Workflow to include Internet delivered TV newscasts.” Help fashion the future and reach out to MyNewsVu. Contact information is on their website and to give you a better user experience here’s Roland’s email address Roland@MyNewsVu.com.

The entrepreneur discusses the megaphone everyone has with an Internet connection. The people who are the new competition or ally to traditional (sometimes referred to as “old”) media. In this decade the power to inexpensively reach global audiences burst into being. Herman provides a new tool with Storify.

He points out in the Times piece:

“This democratization of media means anyone can reach out and find others who share their vision, regardless of geographic boundaries. Causes can spread at the speed of light, and “go viral” as they are shared on social networks.”

The “democratization” has exponentially created the same noise as cable television’s numerous channels. So the audience is frustrated trying to find information that meets their needs among new and old media types competing for their valuable and short attention.

So far technology has failed to discover a way to filter noise and help people get to information they want. Over the next two weeks Broadcast Newsroom Computing will present a couple new technologies answering the need. The first is Storify which is perhaps best described as a noise filtering tool.

Herman defines new noise filters as curators; humans who package information in a consumable form and present it like paintings in a modern art museum. Let me lift another entire paragraph from Herman’s opinion.

“…a new class of gatekeepers has arisen, people whose reputations are built on their ability to highlight relevant information to their audiences. We are still looking for the right word to call these new gatekeepers, but so far “curator” is what appears most appropriate.”

He writes at the heart of the new approach is social media where people congregate based on shared interests. Storify is a utility to gather information of common interest and present in a playlist fashion. So I created a Storify story on social media business cases as example of both new medium and the new tool. Here’s the link to the story.

There you have it; Herman’s new venture Storify and new approach to presenting information in the new decade. Can I write “new” again? Maybe next time when BNC reports on another such tool for gathering news and presenting it based on audience preference.

The cinders outside of Boulder, CO, scene of recent wildfires, have burned out, but lessons to learn remain. The editor of “Lost Remote,” Steve Safran writes stations and newspapers in Boulder did a good job of covering the fires but their best coverage was not on their websites.

The website editor made a substantial point during breaking coverage of the Colorado fires. A point many news executives may have missed regarding how to exploit the huge increase this year in the use of social media. Safran wrote about the wildfires:

“…the real news is on the station’s Facebook and Twitter pages, where moment by moment updates are flying.”

As a reporter, I spent decades in the field covering breaking news; natural disasters and all. Traditional media has tremendous experience covering developing events. Social media and user generated content are changing newsroom practices though.

Mainstream media has to break the circle of wagons and use the power of new media to deliver news and drive viewers, readers and listeners to traditional media for long form reporting. New thinking has to begin in editorial meetings and travel to the assignment desk and into the production process.

Just as news executives plan teases, bumps, graphics, etcetera; they need to plan new media status updates for Facebook, Twitter, and their websites. Here’s a suggestion from Safran, who wrote for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association blog.

“…whenever there’s a big event in your community, snap up the Twitter name. The media outlets should have snapped up twitter.com/boulderfire and used it as a dedicated feed. Instead, they put the information on their standard twitter.com/wxxx feed.”

He argues the name of the event draws a larger audience. A station’s website can use a widget to aggregate the stream of topic related tweets. You can use lists and hashtags as well to gather user generated information readers and viewers will understand is unsubstantiated. With the station’s branded Twitter account direct the audience to your website, where they’ll collect all sorts of information from users and reporters and learn about your station’s coverage. “If it’s good enough for social media,’ Safran says, ‘it’s good enough for regular news.” I second his advice on branding and placing user generated content in context. Recent studies affirm traditional media is still the most trusted source of information.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press releases a 145-page study every news director in the United States of America must read. The director of the Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, suggests we call the findings “News 3.0.” The Pew report is titled “Americans Spending More Time Following the News.” Download it and set aside a lot of time for an education on news consumption habits gleaned from telephone interviews with more than three thousand Americans in June of this year.

There are more ways available for people to get news and the report indicates because of the plethora of sources more Americans follow the news. Television still leads in consumption and radio and newspapers are ahead of Internet news sources according to research. However, Rosenstiel’s commentary, in the report’s conclusion, argues “the best way to understand what is occurring today with the way people interact with the news and technology is to think of it as the end of our digital childhood.”

The March, 2010 report sampled less than 23-hundred American adults to determine a “revolutionary shift” in how news is consumed has taken place over the last five years. The research claims social networks have an increasing role in how Americans receive news information. Online news consumption falls behind newspapers (third in the contest for consumption). The earlier study indicates three fourths of Americans gathering news online do so through email or social network posts.

What does it all mean? Back to the interpretation from Rosenstiel – Pew studies present “signs of a new phase, perhaps even a new era, in the acquisition and consumption of news.”

Heads up news executives, it’s time to pay attention to the work of the Pew Center and download and study their voluminous reports.

In newsroom management, years ago, I stepped up to the task of teaching the entire news staff how to use personal computers; newly introduced as their desktop workstations. One of the memories of the period was brought to my attention over ten years later when an anchor commented among his cherished possessions was the certificate I awarded him for completing a course in newsroom computing.

He was the journalist who stood up in class in anger and exclaimed “I’m 50-years old, why do I have to learn this now?” I asked him to relax and take break and return when he was prepared to resume. He did and he learned. He made me proud these years since because he confirmed my strategy to educate the staff and reward them for growing.

Using new tools is a matter of survival for journalists. I notice radio reporters learn to edit video, television news people edit and print journalists use audio for more than notes. Broadcast Newsroom Computing writes often about the blurring of skills among old divisions of discipline in news production. It is a subject of continuing growth.

The changes are evidenced in the verbose techcrunch report on Adam Penenberg’s new journalism. The New York University professor returned to daily reporting briefly to break a story traditional media overlooked. Fourteen paragraphs deep into the techcrunch post blogger Paul Carr tells how Penenberg used Twitter to bring to public attention a story other media, new and traditional, missed. The professor forced everyone into “scoop recovery” mode.

Carr writes Penenberg may have developed a breaking news procedure for new journalism in the style he tweeted about Ford Motor Company’s $131- (m) million dollar settlement with the family of Brian Cole. Cole was a New York Mets’ prospect killed in the rollover accident of his Ford Explorer.

Penenberg used old wire service procedure for breaking news. He released short blurbs of information; each adding another layer to the story. The educator’s method was the same way wire services released confirmed information until a write thru of facts could be delivered. The practice allowed broadcasters, in particular, to get word out immediately and build suspense in anticipation of a full report.

The urgent bell rings on wire machines are long gone, replaced by beeps and now, beyond wire services, audible Twitter alerts on workstations to announce breaking news from alert journalists.